There is a strength of self-possession which is the sign that the
last hope has departed. Despair no more leans on others than perfect
contentment, and in despair pride ceases to be counteracted by the sense
of dependence.
Hetty felt that no one could deliver her from the evils that would make
life hateful to her; and no one, she said to herself, should ever know
her misery and humiliation. No; she would not confess even to Dinah. She
would wander out of sight, and drown herself where her body would never
be found, and no one should know what had become of her.
When she got off this coach, she began to walk again, and take cheap
rides in carts, and get cheap meals, going on and on without distinct
purpose, yet strangely, by some fascination, taking the way she had
come, though she was determined not to go back to her own country.
Perhaps it was because she had fixed her mind on the grassy Warwickshire
fields, with the bushy tree-studded hedgerows that made a hiding-place
even in this leafless season. She went more slowly than she came, often
getting over the stiles and sitting for hours under the hedgerows,
looking before her with blank, beautiful eyes; fancying herself at the
edge of a hidden pool, low down, like that in the Scantlands; wondering
if it were very painful to be drowned, and if there would be anything
worse after death than what she dreaded in life.
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